Computers, printers, scanners, servers, phone systems, smart phones, navigation devices, and handheld gaming devices may store a variety of information on various types of data storage devices. When these electronics are decommissioned, it is often desirable to erase all data from and/or physically destroy their associated data storage devices for privacy, security, or other purposes.
Data storage devices may be erased with hardware and software to overwrite all memory storage locations on the data storage devices. Some erasure methods are purely software-based solutions and may only “wipe” one hard drive at a time. Furthermore, some erasure software requires licenses on a per-disk basis. This can be cost-prohibitive for a company with a large quantity of electronics and data storage devices to erase.
Some hardware-based erasure systems can erase twenty-four hard disk drives at one time, but require expensive custom hardware specifically made for erasure only. For example, some such systems are designed to erase only IDE and SATA hard drives. Other hardware-based erasure systems can accept all major magnetic disk connection types, including IDE, SATA, Fibre Channel, SCSI, and SAS, for erasure, but can only erase up to eight hard disk drives at one time and also require expensive custom hardware specifically made for erasure only.